Cha Ca Street

A long sizzle rises, then breaks apart into tiny crackling pops.

Right behind the sound comes a smell. It is dill that has just touched hot fat, pungent yet warm, and it spreads across the whole table.

In the middle of the table, a small charcoal stove glows red. A pan sits on top of it, and the fat inside simmers in tiny bubbles. An adult has just tipped in pieces of deep-golden grilled fish, along with a handful of dill and a few lengths of scallion. The fat sings out and foams around every piece. In a moment, the bright green dill turns soft and limp and wraps itself around the fish.

The children sit at the far end of the table, a good distance from the stove. From there, they catch only glimpses of the fish in the pan, but they hear every sound clearly. The sizzle is a small one, just loud enough to carry across a single table.

In the Old Quarter of Hanoi, a whole street is named after the very dish singing on this table. The dish is called chả cá, and the street is Chả Cá Street.

The street did not always carry that name. People used to call it Hàng Sơn Street. It was once a street of Vietnamese lacquer, brought in from Phú Thọ in baskets woven from bamboo. Keeping lacquer in a woven basket sounds like scooping water into a sieve. But the lacquer coated the bamboo strips, and each basket became a sealed container. What kept the lacquer from leaking out was the lacquer itself.

On Hàng Sơn Street, one family created chả cá and served it right inside their own home. Today the dish is more than a century old. But each person who tells the story names a different time for its birth.

What happened in that house is told in several ways. One account says the family often used the house to shelter followers of Đề Thám, also known as Hoàng Hoa Thám, in their resistance against the French. Another says patriots often gathered there over simple meals of fish, and that quietly selling fish inside the house helped raise money for those followers. A third says guests loved the fish so much that people urged the family to open a proper place to sell it. And a fourth says the family came up with the dish and sold it right there at home.

Each account has its own shape. Yet every one of them begins in the same house, on the same street of lacquer sellers.

How the street got its new name is also told in more than one way. One version says that over time, people came to call the street by the two words Chả Cá, and Hàng Sơn Street was renamed to honor the dish. The writer Băng Sơn also tells a lighthearted version. In it, the authorities had to admit defeat to the family who made chả cá. They accepted Chả Cá as the name of the street, and from then on the old name was gone.

The sizzle on the table is only the final step. Before reaching the pan, those pieces of fish have already been through fire once.

It all begins in the hands of the cook, who chooses the fish, usually cá lăng, a fish with few bones and sweet, fragrant flesh. The fish is filleted and cut into pieces. The cook rubs them with yellow turmeric and aromatic galangal. Little by little, the ivory-white flesh turns a bright yellow.

What goes into the marinade differs from one cook to the next. Some add a little sour fermented rice, others a little shrimp paste. Only turmeric and galangal are always there. Once marinated, the fish is left to rest for a while so the flavors sink in.

Then the cook presses the pieces of fish between bamboo sticks, making one bamboo clamp after another. The charcoal in the stove already glows red. The clamps go over the coals and are turned with a steady hand, one side and then the other. This cannot be rushed. Only when both sides are equally golden are the clamps lifted away. Beneath them, the charcoal crackles. The smell of grilling fish rises, mingled with turmeric and galangal.

Bamboo again. On the old Hàng Sơn Street, bamboo was woven into baskets to hold lacquer. Here beside the charcoal stove, bamboo grips the grilling fish tight.

Only when the dish is served does the fish meet fire a second time, in the pan of bubbling fat. One writer, explaining how to make chả cá the old way, summed it up: the dish is best when it passes through two fires. The first fire is the glowing charcoal under the bamboo clamps, which turns both sides of the fish golden. The second fire is the hot pan right on the table, so the fish is eaten piping hot. The sizzle at the very beginning was the sound of that second fire.

The adults lift the fish, dill and scallions into each bowl, with a little tangle of white rice noodles. On top go a little fat from the pan, a little shrimp paste and a few roasted peanuts. On the side are fresh herbs: cilantro and mint. One small bowl holds everything: golden fish, green herbs, white noodles, crunchy peanuts.

Nearby, an adult squeezes fresh lime into a bowl of shrimp paste, drops in a few slices of chili, then whisks it with a pair of chopsticks, steady and even. The chopsticks spin round and round, tapping the side of the bowl, click-clack, click-clack. The children hear those chopsticks clearly, between the pops of the fat. After a long whisking, the shrimp paste rises into a fine foam that smells of lime.

In the old way, the bowl of shrimp paste also gets a little essence from cà cuống, a giant water bug. Today that essence is hard to find, and it is usually left out.

From one house on an old street, the dish slowly spread all over Hanoi. In many places around the city, people make chả cá, and each place gives itself a name of its own. And in the family that created the dish, the way of making it has been handed down through many generations.

At the table, an adult tips the last batch of fish into the pan.

In the Old Quarter, the old street still bears the name of this dish. And here, in the little stove, the charcoal crackles. In the pan, the fat sings out again to greet the fish just dropped in. Sizzle.